I recently constructed a 4TB array to put all my data on, and once I migrate all my data onto it, I'll have the 4 drives currently in my rig to play around with.

The first idea that came to mind would be to take two of the 500GB drives, and put them into RAID 0, and then to use the TB drive and make a RAID 1 with the three drives, leaving the last one for miscellaneous storage or external use.

Or, I could just leave the TB as the boot drive, and make, say, a RAID5 for backups. Not sure what advantages there are to that, though.

Personally would add the TB drive to the array too, if needed extra storage for non-important things depending on your controller can just use the leftover partition. Would be easy with MDADM but I doubt you'll be using this under Linux.

Originally Posted by samus129;13843567
how many disks in your 4TB raid and what raid type is it?

3x2TB drives in RAID 5

Quote:

Originally Posted by beers;13843579
3x 500GB RAID 5 may be the most straightforward one.

Personally would add the TB drive to the array too, if needed extra storage for non-important things depending on your controller can just use the leftover partition. Would be easy with MDADM but I doubt you'll be using this under Linux.

It would be, and the server's running Ubuntu server, so I could expand it, though not with the TB drive.

The main reason I'd want the RAID0 is, of course, the newfound speed. Don't have an SSD, but booting windows off a good RAID 0 should be pretty fast, right?

Another idea would be to RAID-0 all 4 drives. I'd lose 500GB, and I'd be 4 times more likely to lose my main rig's data, but that's what backups are for, right? Speed gain would be pretty huge, I think.

Originally Posted by DEC_42;13861916
Another idea would be to RAID-0 all 4 drives. I'd lose 500GB, and I'd be 4 times more likely to lose my main rig's data, but that's what backups are for, right? Speed gain would be pretty huge, I think.

Partition the 1TB into 2 500 partitions. Use the 4 X 500GB to make a sfotware RAID5 and boot from the remaining 500GB partition on the 1TB disk. You only boot Linux servers once in 6 months if at all... So, gaining boot speed with RAID0 is irrelevant and a stupid move if you care about data at all (even with backups).

Originally Posted by videoman5;13861946
I'd JBOD all of them and get an SSD. Failing that, a RAID-0 of the 3X500GBs and have a separate 1TB drive for backups and crap. Which would be really similar to my setup honestly.

+1

Why RAID-5? If one of your drives dies, you'll probably want to upgrade anyway... go 3x RAID-0 and if one dies just drop it to 2x RAID-0.Edited by Kramy - 6/14/11 at 5:49pm